DOI: 10.2478/v10320-012-0037-2 THE MODERN WOMAN AND WOMEN’S EMANCIPATION IN 19TH CENTURY ENGLISH AND ROMANIAN COMEDIES IOANA-FLORINA MITEA University of Bucharest 7-13, Pitar Mos St., Bucharest, Romania [email protected] Abstract: The construction of feminine characters in nineteenth century English and Romanian comedies reflects the changes that the two societies were experiencing, especially the fact that women were no longer confined to domestic life. The plays feature women assimilating the latest fashions and lifestyles, their aspirations to change their status and their steps towards emancipation. Keywords: feminine characters, nineteenth century English comedies, nineteenth century Romanian comedies, women’s emancipation Introduction Romanian drama in the nineteenth century before the début of Ion Luca Caragiale is largely comprised of comedies, many of which were adapted or translated vaudevilles (light and agreeable plays of French origin, easy to understand for the audience) and made suitable for the stage by Romanian playwrights, who replaced the conventional characters with ones taken directly from their society. Their contemporary setting and critical spirit are characteristic of these plays: they tend to reveal some negative aspects of life and argue for the correction of manners by means of satire. As Mihai Vasiliu (1995:63-64) states, the first examples of original drama are found in the form of satirical comedy. The authors exposed, with a corrective intention and use of comical means, the mores of society: the parvenus, the marriages of convenience, the deliberate imitation of 172 the customs and usages of the Western world, the Romanian language spoken with a foreign accent and many mistakes, captured in very simple structures and with theatrical resources that were still modest by comparison with the requirements of dramatic dialogue. The English drama before Thomas Robertson, widely regarded as the first modern English playwright and as having introduced a new era in English drama, “the return of respectability” (Rowell 1978:75), drew the portrait of fashionable society, with the satirical intention of pointing out its flaws. The gambling scene, the fops and the social vices are portrayed, but the typical duel between the sexes of the Restoration, which usually ended with seduction, is omitted and replaced with material typically found in sentimental drama: a happy ending, sometimes with a marriage. Some of the characters are drawn from the comedy of humours and other elements, such as an unexpected inheritance in melodramas (Bailey 1966:28). Some of the situations and characters of the English comedies are drawn from the French vaudevilles, encouraged especially by the taste of the theatre audience: there was a huge demand for plays, to fill the bills, and these plays did not need to reach literary excellence but only to bring profit to theatres (Booth 1975:201-202) and please the working class and lower middle class audience. Likewise, the Romanian playwrights and managers took into account the level of the audience and their own financial difficulties, using “familiar forms, approved by the public (comedy, vaudeville, melodrama), an accessible stage language, a repertoire in agreement with the taste of those who paid for the tickets and yet skillfully adapted to the educational purpose of the stage” (Cornea 1980:262). Concerning models, Mircea Anghelescu (1996:91-93) argues that Charles Drouhet’s previous comparative research on the French models of Alecsandri’s comedy created the impression that they were directly indebted to French sources that they imitate, localize or translate and have no “originality”. But the French comedy of the third decade of the nineteenth century was only one facet of the European drama of that time. Almost all the processes of Alecsandri’s comedies are found in the European comic drama of the first half of the century (not only in the French drama that Alecsandri had known when he was young, but also in German and English drama), common to many cultural areas, in which it is still impossible to discern what is “original” and what is 173 “borrowed”. From these European models, Alecsandri kept the general frame, the overall plot line and the characters with their traits, marital status and social position, while transposing the play in all its constitutive aspects to the Moldavian reality of the mid- nineteenth century (Anghelescu 1996:110). Regarding originality, Michael R. Booth (2004:1989) states that the genres of English drama were mixed together and combined with stage adaptations of French and German plays. One can say that there is almost no such thing in this veritable maelstrom of dramatic writing as purity of form and singleness of genre. Definition is an acute problem in this period of theatre history, given the fact that tragic and pathetic parts, comic characters combined with serious ones and a constantly changing dramatic tone can be found in the same play. Similarly, Anghelescu notes the many factors that influenced Romanian theatre in the nineteenth century. Noting “the common air that characterises the whole production of the comic first half of the nineteenth-century”, Anghelescu shows that the frequent movement of theatre troupes across national borders made comedies move quickly from one end of the continent to the other, and the continuous need to refresh the repertoire led the most prolific authors to use, with the greatest freedom, ideas, plots, types, lines and gags from plays they had read or watched (1996: 92-93; 11). The most easily visible feminine characters in these Romanian plays are ridiculous coquettes, who imitate Western fashion and strive to upgrade their social status through education or marriage (theirs or their children’s). The playwrights try to show and question the mores of the time. The feminine characters in these Romanian comedies are the first to adopt Western forms of civilization, are ambitious, eager to lead a modern life, emancipated and open to progress. Typically, the dull, narrow-minded and conservative husband, the traditional and retrograde element, has a conflict with his wife: he does not want her to go beyond his comfort zone. Nineteenth-century women have more time and are more concerned to take on new fashions, foreign words and expressions, the new ideas and habits and some of the female characters that imitate foreign models succeed in bringing about real change and progress. They manage to get away from the domestic sphere that was reserved for them and express their wish for emancipation through reading, learning foreign languages (especially French), travelling, 174 patronage and attending salons. Cocoana Măndica (O soaré la mahala/ A Soirée in the Neighbourhood by Costache Caragiali, 1845) frequently criticises her husband, who has not adapted to the latest changes in language, dress and habits. Just like Alecsandri’s character Chiriţa later on, she cannot understand why her husband does not like tea parties and is furious because he embarrases her. Boyar Anastase says that he is protecting the family’s “moral honesty” by banishing from his house the new fashionable habits, admired and imitated by his wife, of those who are ruining the language and traditions. Caliopi Busuioc (Muza de la Burdujăni/ The Muse of Burdujăni by Costache Negruzzi, 1851, an adaptation of Théodore Leclercq’s La Sapho de Quimpercorentin) is a parvenue, not on the social scale, but in the realm of literature, although she is snobbish and whimsical and ready to fall for Baron Flaimuc, Signor Turlupini, or Kir Lacherdopulos. She is also a “Frenchified lady” like the characters of Costache Faccà’s Comodia vremii (The Comedy of Today, 1833), and her speech bears the mark of the kind of melodramatic and romantic literature which was later to be parodied by Caragiale. But of the utmost importance is her quest for an acknowledgment of her intellectual status as a way of becoming a part of high society. She is a poet and speaks good Italian and Greek, and is able to face the character Teodorini’s challenges when he ridicules her wish to get married. Caliopi also imposes the Western fashions of educated people on Trohin: she is critical of Trohin’s old clothes, which are no longer fashionable and give him a frightful appearance. Gahiţa Rosmarinovici (Iorgu de la Sadagura/ Iorgu of Sadagura by Vasile Alecsandri, 1844) sighs when she thinks about the benefits of civilization as seen in Chernivtsi. She is surprised that Damian does not know what the word “invitation” means, calls him an “arriéré” and states that it is pointless to talk to him about the elegance and delicacy of the French language. Gahiţa admires the elegant atmosphere of the salons abroad and the young unmarried men there. She wants to be in the midst of a society “full of grace”. Iorgu and Gahiţa leave together for Iaşi and Iorgu is glad that he found someone who “unveiled their mind like a cauliflower in the warmth of civilization” and who travelled a lot. Such examples can also be found in British comedies: Lady Duberly (The Heir at Law by George Colman, 1800) becomes rich by inheriting, with her husband, old Lord Duberly’s fortune and wants her family to acquire noble manners overnight. She tries 175 unsuccessfully to civilize her husband with some help from a teacher. She cannot stand the fact that Lord Duberly does not know the difference between drinking tea from a cup or from a saucer, which is very important in high society, and regrets that the old Lord did not leave her husband some manners together with the money. Mrs. Templeton (Education by Thomas Morton, 1813) has an “active taste for expense, with a decided averseness from all household duties, produced by the indolent and deceptive spirit of procrastination”. She accuses her husband of treason against the monarchy of fashion that she is a loyal subject of.